The final strategy to promote teamwork and collaboration is “Share Your Street Corner”. Your street corner is your perspective. Not only are you encouraged to share your own ideas, but listen to the perspectives of others with an open mind.
How often in business does a strategy fail or a culture suffer because someone instrumental is missing from the conversation. This may be because they are physically absent from the conversation or because they choose not to share their ideas for fear they may cause conflict and not look like a team player. When this happens, you lose the creative friction that is vital to finding better ways of doing things.
It is analogous to witnessing an accident in the middle of the street. If you are standing on the northwest street corner, your view and therefore interpretation of events is going to be different than the people on the northeast, southwest, and southeast corners. It is impossible for your experience to be identical to theirs. And they may hold key pieces of knowledge that can identify exactly how the accident occurred or who is really at fault.
Applying this to an organization, when we hear someone speaking from a different street corner, we often get defensive or impatient or resentful because what we are hearing appears to conflict with our own view of the street. We need to impart that conflict is the way to positive change, and approach our differences with an air of curiosity instead of those negative feelings.
In addition, we need to not only listen to another’s perspective, but be willing to join them on their street corner. When we stand together but respect each other’s diversity of opinion, we can build on each other’s ideas and perspectives and come up with something better than any of us could on our own.
TechniGrafic Solutions, Inc.
Internet Marketing and Lead Generation
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